WooCommerce or Shopify: which suits whom, for an eshop in Greece.

Shopify is a subscription service: Shopify hosts your eshop, updates it and protects it. WooCommerce is a free, open-source add-on for WordPress: you install it on hosting of your own, and the code and the data stay yours.

Almost every other difference follows from that. With Shopify you don’t deal with servers, updates and backups, but you work within the limits of the platform and your plan. With WooCommerce you can change anything you like, but someone has to look after updates, security and speed.

Neither one is “the right one” for everybody. The question is what you sell, where else you sell it, and which software the eshop has to connect to.

We don’t give amounts, because they change often and depend on the plan. But we do say where you pay, because that’s where the differences are.

On Shopify:

• A subscription, monthly or yearly, on four main plans: Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus.
• A fee on every card payment through Shopify Payments, which has worked in Greece too since March 2025.
• An extra transaction fee if you take payments through another payment provider, your bank for example. Shopify charges it on top of the provider’s fee, and it gets smaller on higher plans.
• Apps from the Shopify App Store, which usually have their own monthly subscription and are billed through your Shopify account.

On WooCommerce:

• WooCommerce itself is free.
• Hosting and a domain, which you choose.
• Paid add-ons: those you buy from the WooCommerce Marketplace come with a one-year or two-year subscription for updates and support. There are many free ones too.
• Card payments through the bank or payment provider you prefer, at that provider’s fee. WooPayments, WooCommerce’s own payment service, works in Greece too.
• Maintenance: updates, backups and security checks, by you, your hosting company or your developer.

On Shopify, the charges follow your sales and the apps you add. On WooCommerce, the cost is mainly hosting and maintenance, which grow with traffic and the size of the catalogue.

Neither platform issues tax documents for AADE, the Greek tax authority, on its own. On both, the receipt or invoice is issued in one of two ways:

• With a plugin or app from a licensed provider, which issues the document from the order and sends it to myDATA, AADE’s platform. This suits an eshop with no business software behind it.
• Through your business software (ERP): the order goes into your software, Odoo for example, and the document goes out from there through the provider. This suits you when you also have a shop, wholesale customers or marketplaces, because all documents are issued from one place.

From 2 November 2026, e-invoicing is mandatory for all businesses on sales to other businesses, and from 1 February 2027 these invoices go out only through a provider or AADE’s own apps. What that means for the software you have is explained in the guide to 1 February 2027.

This is where one practical difference between the two platforms shows. To issue an invoice instead of a receipt, the eshop has to ask “receipt or invoice?” («απόδειξη ή τιμολόγιο;») and take the customer’s VAT number (ΑΦΜ). On WooCommerce, these fields go into the checkout freely. On Shopify, fields inside the checkout steps (information, shipping, payment) are allowed only on the Plus plan. On the other plans you ask for them in the cart, before the customer reaches the checkout.

Skroutz, BestPrice and Shopflix are Greece’s big price-comparison sites and marketplaces. They read your products from an XML file, and each has its own specification. For the Skroutz XML there are ready-made plugins and apps on both platforms. For the others, check that the plugin follows each one’s specification.

Problems are usually not in the platform but in the data: missing EANs, wrong availability, titles without the brand or model. You can check your XML feed for free for Skroutz, BestPrice and Shopflix, in your browser.

If you also sell on marketplaces, stock has to be the same everywhere, or you sell something that has run out. That’s solved more reliably when the XML comes from the software that knows the stock, not from a file built once a day. See how we set up the marketplaces.

Both platforms connect to business software such as Odoo through their API (the interface they offer to other programs):

• WooCommerce has a REST API and webhooks, messages it sends when an order comes in or changes. Webhooks switch themselves off after more than five consecutive failures, so a sound connection also checks on its own, every few minutes, for orders that didn’t arrive.
• Shopify connects through the GraphQL Admin API. The older REST API has been “legacy” since October 2024, and since April 2025 new public apps are built with GraphQL only. If the connection you’re offered still relies on REST, ask how it will be maintained.

The platform matters less than the rules of the connection: which system decides on prices, stock and customers, and what happens when they disagree. We explain them in the guide which system has the last word. For WooCommerce in particular, see how we connect Odoo and WooCommerce, even across several stores.

Shopify suits you if:

• you want to start quickly, without dealing with hosting, updates and backups;
• your catalogue needs no special logic, for example products with few variants and simple shipping;
• Shopify Payments is enough for your card payments;
• you don’t need special fields inside the checkout, or you plan to move to Plus.

WooCommerce suits you if:

• you have a large catalogue, many variants or products that come from suppliers’ XML feeds;
• you want a free hand at checkout: receipt or invoice, VAT number, the payment and shipping methods you choose;
• the eshop has to connect to business software, marketplaces, B2B customers or a physical shop, with your own rules;
• you want the code and the database to be yours.

Whichever you choose, the eshop needs the same things for the new consumer rules in Greece: a withdrawal button, cookies with “Reject”, the correct previous price on discounts, and accessibility. On both platforms, the withdrawal button is usually set up with a plugin or an app. See what the new rules ask for and, for WooCommerce, the guide to the withdrawal button.

Products, customers and orders move in both directions, with files or through the API. What needs care is the page addresses: they almost always change, and every old address has to lead to the new one (a 301 redirect), so you don’t lose your positions in Google.

Before you switch, write down what doesn’t work for you today. If it’s speed or design, that can usually be fixed without changing platform. If it’s the charges, the connections to other software or the limits of the checkout, then switching may be worth it.

We build eshops mainly on WooCommerce, and on Shopify when it fits better. We connect both to Odoo. See eshop development on WooCommerce and what we set up on Shopify.